People See Verified Events
While Out-Of-Body

The scientific method requires all phenomena to be reproducible, provide
veridical details (i.e., details which cannot be explained away, which are found to be
true), and undergo rigorous tests to rule out all the known alternative explanations,
for a theory to be proven as scientific fact. Using the
scientific method, near-death experiences have been proven to be a
real scientific phenomenon because they are reproducible. Near-death
experiences were first shown to be reproducible during studies involving
the subjection of fighter pilots to extreme
gravitational forces in a giant centrifuge. But the question is not, "Are
near-death experiences
real?" Even skeptics now concede that it is a real phenomenon. The
question to ask is, "Are near-death experiences a phenomenon of a
person's consciousness being outside of their body?" And if this can be proven true, then the next
question is, "Can consciousness survive bodily death?" This last
question likely cannot be proven true to the satisfaction of the
skeptics using near-death research alone. This is because no matter how
you define "death," the only kind of definition that satisfies the
skeptics is "irreversible" death. Just the very nature of the phrase
"near-death" suggests that it is not true death - where nobody
comes back. However, good scientific evidence for survival can be found
in other realms of research such as
psychic studies,
quantum physics,
consciousness studies, and
remote viewing -
not to mention
the
mountain of circumstantial evidence.

1. Veridical
Perception in Near-Death Experiences

At
this point in near-death studies, researchers are particularly interested in studying those NDEs that may provide an answer to the question of whether the mind can function outside the physical body. This is the first step in determining whether consciousness can survive bodily death. One
way is to discover this is to examine those NDEs which are "veridical"
(verifiable). Veridical NDEs occur when the experiencer acquires verifiable information
which they could not have obtained by any normal means. Often, near-death experiencers report witnessing events
that happen at some distant location away from their body, such as another room of the hospital.
If the events witnessed by the experiencer at the distant location can be
verified to have occurred, then veridical perception would be said to have
taken place. It would provide very compelling evidence that NDEs are
experiences outside of the physical body.
Visit the NDE and Out-Of-Body research conclusions
to read a large collection of veridical NDEs.

Besides his ground-breaking book,
Life After
Life, Raymond Moody is the author of the
excellent NDE books, The
Light Beyond, Reunions,
Life
After Loss, Coming
Back, Reflections,
and The
Last Laugh. In Life After
Life, Moody documents a number of veridical near-death experiences
which will be described here. This veridical evidence suggests the
possibility that consciousness can exist away from the body. In light of such veridical evidence, other NDE theories fall by the wayside because they cannot account for these veridical details.
And although the available veridical NDE evidence does not
constitute scientific proof of consciousness surviving bodily death, it
does qualify as very powerful circumstantial and anecdotal evidence, the kind of evidence
that is upheld every day in courts of law all around the country.

Whether or not
there will ever be scientific evidence for the survival of consciousness
may depend upon science itself and how such phenomenon as NDEs can be
quantified. Using the strict demands of science, we can only conclude as
Dr. Raymond Moody does when he had this to say:

"I don't have any idea whether there's life after death or not. I've been a follower of science all of my life, but I also have a Ph.D. in philosophy, and it really seems to me that the question of life after death is not yet ripe for scientific enquiry because it's not formulatable in a way that fits into the scientific method. I also think it's the most important question. If you think of the big questions of existence, this is the biggie."

The following are some examples of
veridical NDEs documented by Moody:

Example 1:
An elderly woman had been blind since childhood. But, during her NDE, the woman had regained her sight and she was able to accurately describe the instruments and techniques used during the resuscitation her body. After the woman was revived, she reported the details to her doctor. She was able to tell her doctor who came in and out, what they said, what they wore, what they did, all of which was true. Her doctor then referred the woman to Moody who he knew was doing research at the time on NDEs.

Example 2: One patient told Moody, After it
was all over the doctor told me that I had a really bad time, and I said,
Yeah, I know.' He said, Well, how do you know?' and I said, I can tell
you everything that happened.' He didn't believe me, so I told him the whole
story, from the time I stopped breathing until the time I was kind of coming
around. He was really shocked to know that I knew everything that had
happened. He didn't know quite what to say, but he came in several times to
ask me different things about it.

Example 3: In another instance a woman with a heart
condition was dying at the same time that her sister was in a diabetic coma
in another part of the same hospital. The subject reported having a
conversation with her sister as both of them hovered near the ceiling
watching the medical team work on her body below. When the woman awoke, she
told the doctor that her sister had died while her own resuscitation was
taking place. The doctor denied it, but when she insisted, he had a nurse
check on it. The sister had, in fact, died during the time in question.

Example 4: A dying girl left her body and into another room
in the hospital where she found her older sister crying and saying:

"Oh, Kathy,
please don't die, please don't die."

The older sister was quite
baffled when, later, Kathy told her exactly where she had been and what she
had been saying during this time.

"After it was
all over, the doctor told me that I had a really bad time, and I
said, "Yeah, I know."

He said, "Well,
how do you know?"And I said, "I
can tell you everything that happened."

He didn't
believe me, so I told him the whole story, from the time I
stopped breathing until the time I was kind of coming around. He
was really shocked to know that I knew everything that had
happened. He didn't know quite what to say, but he came in
several times to ask me different things about it.

When I woke up
after the accident, my father was there, and I didn't even want
to know what sort of shape I was in, or how I was, or how the
doctors thought I would be. All I wanted to talk about was the
experience I had been through. I told my father who had dragged
my body out of the building, and even what color clothes that
person had on, and how they got me out, and even about all the
conversation that had been going on in the area.

And my father
said, "Well, yes, these things were true."

Yet, my body was
physically out this whole time, and there was no way I could
have seen or heard these things without being outside of my
body.

2. Dr. Moody's
Exceptional NDE Testimony

In
his book, Life After Life, Moody documents what he calls "a rather
exceptional account" which embodies many of the elements of the NDE that he
describes and has an interesting veridical near-death experience. I think
you will agree that it is rather exceptional:

Jack's NDE:
"At the time this happened I suffered, as I still do, a very severe case of
bronchial asthma and emphysema. One day, I got into a coughing fit and
apparently ruptured a disk in the lower part of my spine. For a couple of
months, I consulted a number of doctors for the agonizing pain, and finally
one of them referred me to a neurosurgeon, Dr. Wyatt. He saw me and told me
that I needed to be admitted to the hospital immediately, so I went on in
and they put me in traction right away.

"Dr. Wyatt knew that I had bad respiratory diseases so he
called in a lung specialist, who said that the anesthesiologist, Dr.
Coleman, should be consulted if I was going to be put to sleep. So the lung
specialist worked on me for almost three weeks until he finally got me to a
place where Dr. Coleman would put me under. He finally consented on a
Monday, although he was very much worried about it. They scheduled the
operation for the next Friday. Monday night, I went to sleep and had a
restful sleep until sometime early Tuesday morning, when I woke up in severe
pain. I turned over and tried to get in a more comfortable position, but
just at that moment a light appeared in the corner of the room, just below
the ceiling. It was just a ball of light, almost like a globe, and it was
not very large, I would say no more than twelve to fifteen inches in
diameter, and as this light appeared, a feeling came over me. I can't say
that it was an eerie feeling, because it was not. It was a feeling of
complete peace and utter relaxation. I could see a hand reach down for me
from the light, and the light said:

"Come with me. I
want to show you something."

"So immediately, without
any hesitation whatsoever, I reached up with my hand and grabbed onto the
hand I saw. As I did, I had the feeling of being drawn up and of leaving my
body, and I looked back and saw it lying there on the bed while I was going
up towards the ceiling of the room.

"Now, at this time, as soon as I left my body, I took on the
same form as the light. I got the feeling, and I'll have to use my own words
for it, because I've never heard anyone talk about anything like this, that
this form was definitely a spirit. It wasn't a body, just a wisp of smoke or
a vapor. It looked almost like the clouds of cigarette smoke you can see
when they are illuminated as they drift around a lamp. The form I took had
colors, though. There was orange, yellow, and a color that was very
indistinct to me - I took it to be an indigo, a bluish color.

"This spiritual form didn't have a shape like a body. It was
more or less circular, but it had what I would call a hand. I know this
because when the light reached down for me, I reached up for it with my
hand. Yet, the arm and hand of my body just stayed put, because I could see
them lying on the bed, down by the side of my body, as I rose up to the
light. But when I wasn't using this spiritual hand, the spirit went back to
the circular pattern.

"So, I was drawn up to the same position the light was in, and
we started moving through the ceiling and the wall of the hospital room,
into the corridor, and through the corridor, down through the floors it
seemed, on down to a lower floor in the hospital. We had no difficulty in
passing through doors or walls. They would just fade away from us as we
would approach them.

"During this period it seemed that we were traveling. I knew
we were moving, yet there was no sensation of speed. And in a moment, almost
instantaneously, really, I realized that we had reached the recovery room of
the hospital. Now, I hadn't even known where the recovery room was at this
hospital, but we got there, and again, we were in the corner of the room
near the ceiling, up above everything else. I saw the doctors and nurses
walking around in their green suits and saw the beds that were placed around
in there. This being then told me - he showed me:

"That's where
you're going to be. When they bring you off the operating table
they're going to put you in that bed, but you will never awaken
from that position. You'll know nothing after you go to the
operating room until I come back to get you sometime after
this."

"Now, I won't say this was
in words. It wasn't like an audible voice, because if it had been I would
have expected the others in the room to have heard the voice, and they
didn't. It was more of an impression that came to me. But it was in such a
vivid form that there was no way for me to say I didn't hear it or I didn't
feel it. It was definite to me.

"And what I was seeing - well, it was so much easier to
recognize things while I was in this spiritual form. I was now wondering,
like, "Now, what is that that he is trying to show me?" I knew immediately
what it was, what he had in mind. There was no doubt. It was that bed - it
was the bed on the right just as you come in from the corridor - is where
I'm going to be and he's brought me here for a purpose. And then he told me
why. It came to me that the reason for this was that he didn't want any fear
when the time came that my spirit passed from my body, but that he wanted me
to know what the sensation would be on passing that point. He wanted to
assure me so that I wouldn't be afraid, because he was telling me that he
wouldn't be there immediately, that I would go through other things first,
but that he would be overshadowing everything that happened and would be
there for me at the end.

"Now, immediately, when I had joined him to take the trip to
the recovery room and had become a spirit myself, in a way we had been fused
into one. We were two separate ones, too, of course. Yet, he had full
control of everything that was going on as far as I was concerned. And even
if we were traveling through the walls and ceilings and so forth, well, it
just seemed that we were in such close communion that nothing whatsoever
could have bothered me. Again, it was just a peacefulness, calmness, and a
serenity that have never been found anywhere else.

"So, after he told me this, he took me back to my hospital
room, and as I got back I saw my body again, still lying in the same
position as when we left, and instantaneously I was back in my body. I would
guess that I had been out of my body for five or ten minutes, but passage of
time had nothing to do with this experience. In fact, I don't remember if I
had ever even thought of it as being any particular time.

"Now, this whole thing had just astounded me, took me
completely by surprise. It was so vivid and real - more so than ordinary
experience. And the next morning, I was not in the least afraid. When I
shaved, I noticed that my hand didn't shake like it had been doing for six
or eight weeks before then. I knew that I would be dying, and there was no
regret, no fear. There was no thought, "What can I do to keep this from
happening?" I was ready.

"Now, on Thursday afternoon, the day before the operation the
next morning, I was in my hospital room, and I was worried. My wife and I
have a boy, an adopted nephew, and we were then having some trouble with
him. So I decided to write a letter to my wife and one to my nephew, putting
some of my worries into words, and to hide the letters where they wouldn't
be found until after the operation. After I had written about two pages on
the letter to my wife, it was just as if the floodgates had opened. All at
once, I broke out in tears, sobbing. I felt a presence, and at first I
thought maybe that I had cried so loud that I had disturbed one of the
nurses, and that they had come in to see what was the matter with me. But I
hadn't heard the door open. And again I felt this presence, but I didn't see
any light this time, and thoughts or words came to me, just as before, and
he said:

"Jack, why are
you crying? I thought you would be pleased to be with me."I thought, "Yes,
I am. I want to go very much."

And the voice
said, "Then why are you crying?"

I said, "We've
had trouble with our nephew, you know, and I'm afraid my wife
won't know how to raise him. I'm trying to put into words how I
feel, and what I want her to try to do for him. I'm concerned,
too, because I feel that maybe my presence could have settled
him down some."

Then the
thoughts came to me, from this presence, "Since you are not
asking for someone else, and thinking of others, not Jack, I
will grant what you want. You will live until you see your
nephew become a man."

"And just like that, it was
gone. I stopped crying, and I destroyed the letter so my wife wouldn't
accidentally find it.

"That evening, Dr. Coleman came in and told me that he was
expecting a lot of trouble with putting me to sleep, and for me not to be
surprised to wake up and find a lot of wires and tubes and machines all
around me. I didn't tell him what I had experienced, so I just nodded and
said I would cooperate.

"The next morning the operation took a long time but went
fine, and as I was regaining my consciousness, Dr. Coleman was there with
me, and I told him:

"I know exactly
where I am."

He asked, "What
bed are you in?"

I said, "I'm in
that first bed on the right just as you come in from the hall."

"He just kind of laughed,
and of course, he thought that I was just taking from the anesthetic.

"I wanted to tell him what had happened, but just in a moment
Dr. Wyatt came in and said:

"He's awake now.
What do you want to do?"

And Dr. Coleman
said, "There's not a thing I can do. I've never been so amazed
in my life. Here I am with all this equipment set up and he
doesn't need a thing."

Dr. Wyatt said,
"Miracles still happen, you know."

"So, when I could get up in
the bed and see around the room, I saw that I was in that same bed that the
light had shown me several days before.

"Now, all this was three years ago, but it is still just as
vivid as it was then. It was the most fantastic thing that has ever happened
to me, and it has made a big difference. But I don't talk about it. I have
only told my wife, my brother, my minister, and now you. I don't know how to
say it, but this is so hard to explain. I'm not trying to make a big
explosion in your life, and I'm not trying to brag. It's just that after
this, I don't have any doubts anymore. I know there is life after death."